The Road Always Leads to Crested Butte

“It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.” 

-Wallace Stegner

We were somewhere along Colorado state route 114 heading to Crested Butte when the dread began to take hold.

The low fuel indicator had come on and we were a good 50 miles from the nearest gas station. Our four-cylinder Subaru Outback was laboring up North Pass, loaded with gear and two dogs while towing a 1,200-pound Scamp travel trailer that now felt like it weighed twice that.

Stella Blue – our car's nickname – had struggled with mountain passes throughout our two-week excursion in the Rockies, but this stretch of Colorado backroads seemed especially steep as we faced running out of gas without a place to pull over and no cell reception to call for assistance. We watched the mpg plummet to 15.

I cursed my decision not to fuel up in Saguache, but whatever profanities slipped out of my mouth weren't nearly as sharp as my wife Sandy's, who had strongly suggested that we have a full tank before tackling this last leg. As always, I should’ve listened to her. At least the view of mountains in all directions occasionally distracted us from the dire situation.

Forty miles to Gunnison and who knows how much gas remained. A gallon or two, we guessed. My knuckles turned white and sweat beaded on my forehead from fear of being stranded and the intense summer heat made worse by shutting off the A/C. We whispered "I think I can, I think I can" as Stella Blue slogged ahead and the gas needle plunged below E.

Relief came as we headed down the pass and I was able to ease off the gas pedal. When we approached U.S. 50, I exhaled: Gunnison was within reach. I like to imagine the last few drops of fuel vaporized exactly as we pulled into a Shell station.

Crisis averted, our next stop was Crested Butte, just 28 miles up the road. The rewards for this perilous journey would soon be at hand, yet we didn’t know then how this trip to some remote mountain hamlet, a place we had never before drawn breath, would forever change our lives.

The North Pass Near Disaster, as the incident came to be known, wasn’t the last of my driving gaffes on this adventure. Our campground was a few miles west of Crested Butte at Lake Irwin, but on the way I missed the turn and had to backtrack a mile or two up the road. This isn’t a big deal unless you’re towing a 13-foot camper for the first time and struggle with the notion of “while reversing turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction of the way you want the trailer to move.”

But as we pulled into our site 30 minutes later, unhitched the trailer and set up camp, we realized the troubles of the road were finally behind us.

To be continued...